Related papers: Active doping controls the mode of failure in dens…

While bacterial swimming has been well characterized in uniform liquid environments, only little is known about how bacteria propagate through complex environments, such as gel-like matrices or porous media that are typically encountered in…

Active solids emerge from self-actuating components interacting with each other to form crystalline patterns. In equilibrium, commensurability underpins our understanding of nanoscale friction and particle-level dynamics of crystals.…

We study the dynamics of an active gel droplet with imposed orientational anchoring (normal or planar) at its surface. We find that if the activity is large enough droplets subject to strong anchoring spontaneously start to rotate, with the…

Fracture processes in multi-phase solids are inherently complex due to multiple competing mechanisms. Here, we investigate the elastic and fracture behaviour of two-phase solids, comprising a fragile phase and a tough phase using a…

Active-particle suspensions exhibit distinct polarization-density patterns in activity landscapes, even without anisotropic particle interactions. Such polarization without alignment forces is at work in motility-induced phase separation…

Biological microswimmers often encounter deformable boundaries in physiological conditions; for instance, the viscoelastic walls of reproductive tract during migration of spermatozoa, or host tissue during early bacterial biofilm formation.…

Quasi-static tensile experiments were performed for a model disordered solid consisting of a two-dimensional raft of polydisperse floating granular particles with capillary attractions. The ductility is tuned by controlling the capillary…

We study the dynamical properties of an active particle subject to a swimming speed explicitly depending on the particle position. The oscillating spatial profile of the swim velocity considered in this paper takes inspiration from…

Active materials are capable of converting free energy into directional motion, giving rise to striking dynamical phenomena. Developing a general understanding of their structure in relation to the underlying non-equilibrium physics would…

We study the dynamics of hydration water/protein association in folded proteins, using lysozyme and myoglobin as examples. Extensive molecular dynamics simulations are performed to identify underlying mechanisms of the dynamical transition…

Many biological materials must couple mechanical strength with the ability to rapidly self-assemble at a specific location. In particular, biomolecular condensates readily self-assemble via phase separation, but may also need to resist…

We study, from first principles, the pressure exerted by an active fluid of spherical particles on general boundaries in two dimensions. We show that, despite the non-uniform pressure along curved walls, an equation of state is recovered…

We study numerically the behaviour of a mixture of a passive isotropic fluid and an active polar gel, in the presence of a surfactant favouring emulsification. Focussing on parameters for which the underlying free energy favours the…

We analyse the effect of confining rigid and elastic boundaries on the motility of a model dipolar microswimmer. Flexible boundaries are deformed by the velocity field of the swimmer in such a way that the motility of both extensile and…

Self-assembly of colloidal particles due to elastic interactions in nematic liquid crystals promises tunable composite materials and can be guided by exploiting surface functionalization, geometric shape and topology, though these means of…

The toughness of a polymer material can increase significantly if two networks are combined into one material. This toughening effect is a consequence of a transition from a brittle to a ductile failure response. Although this transition…

Gels in soft-matter systems are an important nonergodic state of matter. We study a colloid-polymer mixture which is quenched by increasing the polymer concentration, from a fluid to a gel. Using confocal microscopy, we study both the…

In this paper, we investigate experimentally the non-equilibrium steady state of an active colloidal suspension under gravity field. The active particles are made of chemically powered colloids, showing self propulsion in the presence of an…

The conditions which determine whether a material behaves in a brittle or ductile fashion on mechanical loading are still elusive and comprise a topic of active research among materials physicists and engineers. In this study, we present…

When a hydrophilic and deformable porous material is immersed in a bath, it may absorb the solvent and expand by several times its volume, thus forming a highly soft and porous hydrogel. A stress applied on the soft hydrogel surface deforms…